With the equivalent [[Bona TV-PCI|Bona/Mentor TV-PCI]] card connected via the line input of a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card, I had some issues getting MythTV to capture the audio. The tvtime application worked flawlessly without any of these procedures. I couldn't get the audio working for MythTV with the saa7134-alsa module and the sox workarounds.

With the equivalent [[Bona TV-PCI|Bona/Mentor TV-PCI]] card connected via the line input of a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card, I had some issues getting MythTV to capture the audio. The tvtime application worked flawlessly without any of these procedures. I couldn't get the audio working for MythTV with the saa7134-alsa module and the sox workarounds.

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On every boot-up, the card must be unmuted and the automute turned off. Some people had the same problems in similar reports for the Avermedia card. Consider putting the following on a boot-up script.

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On every boot-up, the card must be unmuted and the automute turned off. Some people had the same problems in [http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=1850566#post1850566 similar reports] for the Avermedia card. Consider putting the following on a boot-up script.

v4lctl setattr automute off

v4lctl setattr automute off

Revision as of 06:16, 18 January 2007

Disclaimer: the informations may not be 100% correct since I had no previous knowledge about TV cards and may not fully remember what I really did to get it working.

It may work better some day, but for now I had to stick to saa7134-oss module. In a matter of fact modprobe saa7134 may be totally skipped, because while probing for saa7134-oss or saa7134-alsa the main module will be automatically loaded in the background.

The hardware is now perfectly ready, but although you can watch TV, the sound is still not there. As found in AVerMedia Cardbus E500 instructions I did the simple trick, which dumps the sound from TV card (/dev/dsp1) to the real sound card (/dev/dsp):

sox -tossdsp /dev/dsp1 -tossdsp /dev/dsp

For better sound quality try:

sox -c 2 -sw -r 32000 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp

Now everything is in place and I can do basic things - watch and listen TV channels.

MythTV and AC '97 Issues (SBLive)

With the equivalent Bona/Mentor TV-PCI card connected via the line input of a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card, I had some issues getting MythTV to capture the audio. The tvtime application worked flawlessly without any of these procedures. I couldn't get the audio working for MythTV with the saa7134-alsa module and the sox workarounds.

On every boot-up, the card must be unmuted and the automute turned off. Some people had the same problems in similar reports for the Avermedia card. Consider putting the following on a boot-up script.

v4lctl setattr automute off
v4lctl setattr mute off

For the Sound Blaster Live card, the AC '97 volume playback control (through a card mixer, such as alsamixer) is to be completely put to 0 (zero), or else you hear the audio being played back twice. The AC '97 volume capture control should be put as high as possible (beware of distortion).

I still have issues with the audio captured this way by MythTV because I hear crackling noises constantly, but finally it is in sync and not duplicated.